Trump Battles Reporters in Scotland

Donald Trump: I'm Number One With Hispanics

On Tough Issues, Hillary Clinton Stays Safe

Meet the Press
July 29, 2015

Candidates Hit the Road to Sell Their Message

NBC News Channel
July 29, 2015

This content comes from Closed Captioning that was broadcast along with this program.

>>>it's tuesday,
october 2nd
,
2012
. i'm chloyce talbott.
mitt romney
landed in colorado last night and scored the endorsement of the
big guy
. the legendary quarterback and now executive vice president of football operations
john elway
. it was the only scheduled talk. it was a
stealth bomber
in the background there.
romney
tried to tamp down expectations in the back.

>>people want to know who is going to win? who is going to score the punches and who is going to make the biggest difference in the arguments they make? in my view, it's not so much winning or losing or even the people themselves. it's about something bigger than that. these debates are an opportunity for each of us to describe the pathway forward for
america
that we would choose.

>>playing off the enthusiastic crowd.
romney
had lines for the base. may even tested out a few zingers we might hear wednesday night.

>>this is a home to
focus on the family
which is committed to preserving the foundation of
america
. we have to get the pipe laine from canada if i have to build it myself.

>>it will kill
america
's entrepreneurship.

>>that's the first time, by the way,
romney
talked about card check on the stump since the primaries. others call it the
employee free choice act
. it was a priority four years ago. it never passed because a few democrats helped kill it. it's faded from the debate since
2009
. that's why it was odd to hear it last night. the president took a break from a more
low key
debate schedule. he delivered pizzas to the local campaign office where he also called some volunteers and did a little joking about his own debate prep.

>>basically they are putting me indoors all the time. it's a drag. they are making me do my homework.

>>as
romney
and
obama
hunkered down, their surrogates are fan ing out across the country today. the first lady, ohio. that's where early voting begins today. biden is in
north carolina
. march koe rubio brackets the president's visit in vegas.
paul ryan
kicks off a bus tour of the
buckeye state
.

>>i was teaching the kids the song on the way over here.

>>we screw that up. of course, he's in iowa. not ohio. in an interview,
romney
was pressed for specifics on his tax plan. after ryan said on fox news on sunday the math would take too long to explain.

>>you could say everybody is going to get up to a $70,000 deduction and can use your charitable deduction or home mortgage deduction or others. and you can fill that bucket if you will, the $17,000 bucket that way and higher income people might have a lower number. or you could do it by the same method that boll simpson did it. but that's the sort of thing you do with congress.

>>so that's the most detail we have heard
romney
talk about this idea of different buckets and a cap on deductions. but still it's been at nearly every stop in the the last two weeks.
romney
has had to explain the 47% remark. don't be surprised if we hear a version of this answer when it comes up wednesday night.

>>if you could go back to that fundraiser, would you have said it differently?

>>it's not productive for someone to get into the detail of how a campaign is going to cop l together the people i need to win an election. i'm a president for 100% of the
american people
and that's the real% people care about. not 47 versus
anyone else
. i will be president for 100% of the feem.

>>of course, 47% is something we're hearing a lot in tv ads. the president's campaign continues to pound the issue on the air waves. heading into tomorrow night's debate, the president and
romney
each have two vulnerabilities. whatever candidate exploits his opponents will end the night with the upper hand. for the president, he hasn't fully described what his second term is going to look like. proposals in tv ads and on the stump like a million new manufacturing jobs, 100,000 new math and science teachers. feel mores a operational than an actual detailed plan. given the fact there's hunger for change, what change can the incumbent promise? the president has to come up with a good enough explanation of how reelecting him would break the partisan fever in washington. what does
romney
have to deal with? he hasn't differentiated from
george bush
's. and his plans lack specifics. in a one-on-one debate, candidates have a lot of control over how aggressive they are. both
romney
and the president are inexperienced in a one-on-one debate format. few details on the format. the president and
romney
will be at podiums, standing, not sitting, and there will be no basic time limits on their answers. it's not 90 seconds, buzzer, things like that. it's up to the discretion of the moderator, jim leierer. that's going to be up to him. but there's supposed to be a lot of leeway here over how long the conversations go. the debate is on domestic policy.
90 minutes
is supposed to be devoted to the economy specifically with governing and
health care
. but we'll see if the general nature of those areas allows libya to come up, which we know the
romney
folks want to do. debates are as much about style as substance and this is a
reality show
where
obama
and
romney
will meet in the first time in nearly five years before their biggest audience of the campaign. the first
2008presidential debate
between the president and
john mccain
got seven times the audience of the highest rated
2012republican primary
debate. think about that. seven times. past debates show
romney
and
obama
have to worry about cut away shots that are less than flattering. in the past both candidates have come across as irritable, patronizing or disengaged. this was
chris christie
's advice to the candidates yesterday.

>>what you do is go out and be yourself. and people either like it or don't. if they don't, they are going to vote for somebody else. not a tragedy. no one dies.

>>finally speaking of debates, there was a barn burner last night in massachusetts where
scott brown
and democratic challenger
elizabeth warren
faced off in a debate. moderated by nbc's
david gregory
. it was tense from the outset.

>>if you're going to comment on my record, i would at least have you refer to it -- excuse me. i'm not a student in your classroom. please let me respond, okay?

>>that was an echo of a quip brown used in
2010
when he told martha kwaurkly i'm not in your courtroom, i'm not a defendant. i the two fought over whether
elizabeth warren
used her
native american
heritage to gain employment advantage.

>>i listed myself as
native american
. i was listed there. it's part of who i am.

>>do you
consider yourself
a minority?

>>i consider myself as having a
native american
background. that's what i said, that's what i am.

>>is she a liar? is that your judgment?

>>david, you'd have to ask her who she e actually is. at the pinnacle of her success at harvard, she changed back to being white.

>>all night, brown did his best to help voters forget he has a party. he kept calling himself an independent thinker saying
mitch mcconnell
has a lot of work to do to earn his vote to become potentially majority leader if republicans get enough seats. even saying he'd support
john kerry
for secretary of state. but he did trip up when he was asked to name his model
supreme court justice
.

>>let me see here. that's a great question. i think
justice scalia
is a very good judge.
justice kennedy
is obviously very good. and
justice roberts
, justice --

>>warren couldn't hold in her laughter, but she had her own oops moment.

>>can you name some republicans in the senate today that you are able to work with on big issues, substantiative issues the country faces?

>>probably
richard lugar
would come to mind.

>>he's not going to be there. who else can you name?

>>that is a problem.

>>by the way, on scalia, in a state like massachusetts, the conservative justice there not very popular with some of the base folks there. not